YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS
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YMRT_trailer_8minutes.mov
Images
YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS
Website
http://www.lookingglassfilms.net
Topics
Health: Disease/treatment
Human Development: Children, Education, Youth
Information & Media: Knowledge, Science
Project Geography
US: National
International: Europe
Identity Niches
African American, Caucasian, Children, Latino, Senior/Aging, Student, Youth/Teen
Budget
Raised to date: $ 50,000.00
Estimate to complete: $ 250,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $ 300,000.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 02/08/2010
Status
Post Production
Media Type
Video
Project End Use
TV
Key Personnel
Richard Hankin
Director/Producer
Richard Hankin is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and the founder of Looking Glass Films, an independent production company. Hankin has worked on documentaries for both theatrical distribution and for HBO, Showtime, PBS, NBC and ABC. "Home Front," which Hankin directed, produced, wrote and edited, premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival and on the Showtime Network on Veterans Day. Michael Sragow of the Baltimore Sun called the film "Terrific. A lucid knockout of a movie." And Time Magazine named "Home Front" one of the Top Ten films of the year.
"Capturing the Friedmans," which Hankin co-produced and edited, won numerous awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and an Emmy for Hankin's editing. The film was nominated for both an Academy Award and an American Cinema Editor's Award, and was recently honored by the International Documentary Association as one of the best documentaries of all time.
Hankin has served several times as a Creative Advisor for the Sundance Institute Documentary Editing and Storytelling Lab. He holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University.
Meredith Lavitt
Producer
Meredith Lavitt is the founder of Swirl Productions, an independent production company focusing on documentary films for the theatrical and broadcast markets. She produced the critically acclaimed "Home Front," which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.
Lavitt worked for the Sundance Institute from 1993 to 2005, most recently as the Associate Director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program. She worked closely with numerous documentaries from seed funding to the market place, advising filmmakers creatively on their works-in-progress and strategically on their distribution plans.
While at Sundance, Lavitt consulted on such films as the Academy Award-winning "Born into Brothels;" award-winning "Farmingville;" "Shakespeare Behind Bars;" "Romantico;" "Garden;" "El Immortal;" "On the Objection Front;" and "Al Otro Lado."
Outreach/Engagement Plan(s)
We made YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS to both cinematically explore the intrigue of memory, and also to promote education. The outreach possibilities for the film are truly exciting. On one level, we will be able to use the film and related educational materials to raise awareness about the power of memory and the reality of memory loss. In addition, educators will be able to use the film to creatively engage and motivate their students, and hopefully help stem the rising tide of anti-intellectualism in the United States.
Our plan is to use YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS as a powerful tool to both promote and enhance education. Educators are always looking for creative ways to engage and inspire their students. YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS makes memorizing -- and by extension, learning -- fun and dynamic and will empower teachers to get students excited about learning. Hopefully, the film will help give American students the edge they need to compete on the world stage. We can sell/donate a copy of the film to every school in the country. The millions of families that home school are another huge market. We also plan to partner with national organizations and educators to help develop and promote a curriculum that employs memory training techniques.
For their film HOME FRONT, Hankin and Lavitt developed a comprehensive website and established relationships with over 20 partner organizations. With the Wounded Warrior Project, an outreach campaign was created to make the filmn available to every wounded soldier who returned from service. In addition, Hankin and Lavitt arranged special screenings and discussions for a variety of groups, including the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee; Walter Reed Army Medical Center patients and staff; and the New York Occupational Therapy Association.
Partnering with a foundation to promote and advertise both YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS and the outreach campaign would be the ideal scenario.
Funders
| Name | Amount | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York State Council on the Arts | $ 8,000.00 | 07/01/2009 | |
| Lucius & Eva Eastman Fund | $ 4,000.00 | 08/01/2007 | |
| Individual Donors | $ 38,000.00 | 03/01/2007 |
Location(s)
545 W. 110th Street #6E
New York, NY, 10025
See Google Maps
Short Synopsis
YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS is a documentary film that captures the mind-bending journey of a diverse cast of "mental athletes" as they prepare for and ultimately compete in the USA Memory Championship.
Description/Treatment
YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS is a cinematic journey into the world of memory. Using cinema verite footage and humorous animation -- brought vividly to life by the voice of Paul Giamatti -- the feature-length film charts the fun and bizarre subculture of memory athletes as they prepare for and ultimately compete in the USA Memory Championship.
The competition storyline provides a natural narrative arc, but it is the film's characters that give it heart and reveal that the stakes are much higher than the championship itself. A high school teacher from the South Bronx is determined to get his students out of the ghetto and into college by teaching them memory techniques and improving their SAT scores. One of his students, Rosemary, is from a broken home but she embraces the challenge and does her best to ignore her peers telling her "Studying isn't cool."
For another competitor, Jim, a builder from Long Island, the subject of memory is deeply personal: his mother-in-law was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Jim now has his entire family practicing memory techniques. According to Jim, "The more active you are with your brain, the more you engage it, the better off you are."
YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS is an accessible, "family friendly" film akin to some of the most commercially successful documentaries in recent years -- "March of the Penguins," "Spellbound," "Winged Migration," and "Mad, Hot Ballroom." All of the characters' personal stories converge at the pressure-packed competition, where a fresh-faced teen from Pennsylvania threatens to upset a former fireman obsessed with winning. The twists and turns and highly dramatic stakes will keep audiences on the edge of their seats.
At the same time, the diverse cast and personal motivations underscore exciting outreach possibilities -- from raising awareness about the power of memory and the reality of Alzheimer's disease to energizing students with the powerful idea that "learning is cool."
Moving and comic, inspiring and suspenseful, YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS will be an unforgettable film experience.